


Flags

by hawksonfire



Series: Mandatory Fun Day [9]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Asexual Bucky Barnes, Asexual Character, Bisexual Tony Stark, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Fluff, Gay Steve Rogers, M/M, Minor Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, POV Bucky Barnes, Pansexual Clint Barton, Pride, Self-Acceptance, Self-Discovery, all the feels, lesbian natasha romanoff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 09:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19129132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawksonfire/pseuds/hawksonfire
Summary: Bucky's been seein' a lot of rainbows around lately, and he's curious as to why. He doesn't know askingthatquestion will give him the answer to adifferentquestion he didn't even know he had.





	Flags

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [ this weeks ](https://mandatoryfunday.tumblr.com/post/185337253564/happy-pride-month-winterhawklings-for-the-first)Mandatory Fun Day prompt. Love me some Winterhawk at Pride! 
> 
> Happy Pride Month to all those in the community, I wish you a very merry month!

**Bucky**

“What’s with all the rainbows I’ve been seein’ around?” Bucky asks. His question makes the whole room go silent and he rolls his eyes. Great. Another thing they feel like he’s not ready to understand.

“It’s Pride month,” says Clint, and even though it comes out muffled because he has an arrowhead in his mouth (Bucky takes it out gently because it’s an explosive one and Clint’s face is far too pretty to be blown up, thank you very much) Bucky understands.

“Pride for what?”

“Queer people,” Clint says, blinking at him.

“Oh,” Bucky says, “Cool. Good for them.” Clint seems satisfied with that because he goes right back to fiddling with his arrows, but Steve and Stark are still staring at him like they expect him to go all ‘ _queer people are an abomination blah blah blah_ ’. Well, they can fuck off. “You can fuck off, Steve,” he says, “I’m not gonna explode.”

“You’re okay with that?” Steve asks cautiously, and Bucky notices the way that his hands twitch towards Stark’s like he wants to hold them.

“Be kinda a hypocrite if I wasn’t,” he says, and he rolls his eyes again.

Stark opens his mouth, probably to say something dumb, but Steve slaps his hand over it and says, “That’s great, Buck,” like it’s some sort of revelation that Bucky ain’t exactly on the straight and narrow.

Honestly, Bucky’s sort of in awe of Stark - how he manages to put up with Steve’s special brand of stupid on the daily is beyond Bucky. “Uh- _huh_ ,” he says instead, and Clint just barely manages to stifle a snort. That’s the last that Bucky hears of it for a couple of days, and he’s still pretty sure that Stark engineered it so that he would be in the room when they were talking about the annual Avengers Pride float in a couple of weeks - whatever the fuck that is.

Bucky’s sorta preoccupied with the way Clint’s half asleep and near drooling on his shoulder, so he nearly misses it when Stark asks him, “So, MurderBot. Which colours you flying on the float?”

“Dunno,” Bucky says, and it’s true. He doesn’t know which flag he - identifies with? Likes the most? Whatever. He did his own research but all the stuff that he managed to find either was definitely not who he was or just didn’t feel right.

“How can you not know?” Stark says incredulously, and then he’s off explaining the different flags and what they symbolize. And okay fine, it’s pretty cool that there’s so much more acceptance now than there was in Bucky’s day, but he still doesn’t know who he’s attracted to, not really.

“Can we put a pin in that?” He asks quietly, but it’s so rare that he asks for anything nowadays that it immediately shuts Stark up. “I’m still figurin’ out who I was, I haven’t even started on who I am yet. It’s a lot, that’s all.”

“Sure, Barnes,” Stark says, and Bucky nearly spits out his coffee because Stark _never_ calls him by his name - always ‘MurderBot’ or ‘Less Tasty Popsicle’ (which, gross) or some other stupid nickname. “Take all the time you need. But let me know when you figure it out, I’ll have to make you a suit with the flag colours.”

He starts scribbling on a discarded napkin, muttering to himself, and Bucky rolls his eyes (he does that a lot). “C’mon, let’s get you to a couch or somethin’ so you don’t drool all over me,” Bucky says quietly, and he practically carries Clint over to the couch. When he goes to stand up though, Clint won’t let go of the hem of his shirt, and Bucky doesn’t really want to break his fingers to make him. So he just sighs and sits down, and Clint twists and wriggles and flips himself over until his head is pillowed on Bucky’s thigh.

“You don’t gotta choose,” Clint murmurs quietly, still mostly asleep, “Don’ let ‘em pressure you inta doin’ it, you do you, okay Borky?"'

Bucky feels like he should roll his eyes, but he’s never gonna get Clint to stop calling him that garbled version of his name, so instead he just smiles down at him fondly and runs a hand through the unruly mess that Clint calls hair. “Alright,” he says quietly, and he lets Clint fall asleep on his leg and doesn’t even mind when it goes numb.

~~~~~~

“Are you attracted to women?” Clint asks one day - and it’s not like Bucky woulda been bothered by the question any other time, but this was right after he just saw Clint take a nosedive off a building, and his heart’s still racing a little.

So his blunt “Not even a little bit,” takes both of them by surprise. (Later, when he examines those words and the feelings they struck in private, he finds that they’re true.)

“Okay,” says Clint, and he lets Bucky wrap an arm around his torso and bring him to medical.

~~~~~~

“Would you ever fuck -”

“Nope,” Bucky says - and he’s a little less surprised by his answer this time, mostly because he’s learned that Clint tends to spring these questions on him when he’s otherwise occupied. Like now, for example.

“Okay,” Clint says, and Bucky swears viciously as he gets blue-shelled and Clint’s Mario speeds past him and crosses the finish line.

(Bucky’s a little shaken at his intense desire to never have sex, but he remembers feeling something similar when Dolores Jones had tried to suck his dick after their date in ‘38, so he figures he’s always been like that.)

~~~~~~

The week of Pride arrives, and Bucky’s sort of dreading Stark’s questions about whether or not he’ll be joining them on the float because he doesn’t want to let the team down, but he also doesn’t want to be on the float if he’s not all decked out in his colours, whatever they may be.

“Hey, Borky!” Clint shouts, and Bucky practically runs over to him and shoves him out of the room, away from Stark and his intrusive questions, and away from Steve and his “It’s okay if you don’t know, Buck, we just want you to be happy,” and when he comes back to himself later and finds himself in Clint’s lap having his hair stroked - well, he doesn’t think anyone will begrudge him a little comfort, so he pushes a little closer.

“There’s just so much,” he says quietly, barely above a whisper. “What if I choose wrong?”

“You won’t,” Clint says, and Bucky wants to ask him how he knows but Clint keeps going. “You won’t choose wrong, because you _can’t_ choose wrong. I called myself gay before I figured out that I liked women too, I called myself bisexual because I figured I liked both the same, and then I landed on pansexual because those green aliens that came along with Thor the last time he was here ain’t exactly human but I liked them too.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to say. “I’m not attracted to women, but I don’t want to fuck or get fucked by a man,” he says weakly into Clint’s leg, and _oh_ , looks like he did know.

“There’re words for those,” Clint says easily, and Bucky blinks.

“But... It’s not normal,” he says, confused.

“None of us are normal,” Clint jokes, “We’re the fuckin’ Avengers, pal.” He sobers, and then, “It could be your normal, you know. Just like being pansexual is my normal. It’s weird to me that Natasha doesn’t understand the appeal of scruff on a sharp jawline, just like it’s weird to her that I do. Normal is relative, Bucky.”

“There are really words for this?” Bucky asks, and he’s only holding his breath a little, honest.

“Sure,” Clint says, and he puts a laptop in front of Bucky. Bucky reads what’s on the screen, and something just... _Clicks_ . “I know that look,” Clint says, and when Bucky looks at him and sees the _joy_ on his face that Bucky’s found something for himself, something else clicks.

“I love you,” Bucky says without thinking, and then he blinks. “Oh.”

Clint’s eyes widen and he beams at Bucky. “Good, because the feeling’s mutual,” he says, and Bucky barely even registers that he’s still on Clint’s lap before he’s leaning in and pressing a kiss to the archer’s cheek.

“Sorry,” Bucky says, but he isn’t.

“Are you gonna do that every time I say that?” Clint asks, hand pressed to his cheek.

“Technically, you haven’t said it yet,” Bucky points out, and Clint snorts.

“I love you, Bucky Barnes,” he says, and Bucky kisses him again.

“Looks like the answer’s yes,” he says, satisfied with himself. He pulls the laptop in front of him and scrolls down, stopping when he comes across the flag. “It’s a good thing there’s purple on this flag,” he says, watching Clint’s face, “Because I like wearing your colours.”

Clint’s face lights up and he wraps Bucky in his arms and squeezes - and honestly, Bucky never really understood Stark’s fascination with being so much shorter than Steve, but if it’s because both Steve and Clint can wrap them up in their arms and make them feel _safe_... Well, he’s all the way on board.

~~~~~~

“Are you sure?” Bucky asks, staring at the piece of cloth on his bed.

“Positive,” Clint says softly. He’s all decked out in pink, yellow and blue and he’s got glitter in his hair and on his face - and Bucky loves the way it looks on him, loves the way it makes him smile.

“Okay,” Bucky says, and he takes a deep breath and then ties the flag around his neck like a cape.

“C’mon,” Clint says, grabbing his hand, “Tasha’ll do your makeup.”

~~~~~~

Pride is loud. And bright. And there are so many ways for someone to reach them and hurt them or kill them or poison them. And Bucky’s never had so much fun in his life.

The float is - well, the float is hard to describe. It’s massive and bright and colourful and Bucky has no idea what the fuck it is but he loves it. When Stark comes shooting out the top in his bisexual Iron Man suit, the crowd goes nuts, and it only gets louder when Steve makes an appearance dressed head to toe in rainbows.

And then it’s Bucky and Clint’s turn, and Clint gives Bucky’s hand a squeeze before pulling him out onto the top of the float, a massive smile on his face. Bucky follows along, holding Clint’s hand in a death grip, squinting his eyes as the sunlight hits it.

He can’t stop the smile that’s spreading over his face, and he doesn’t bother trying. His eyes dart over the crowd and he sees so much - rainbows and glitter and flags. So many flags. He’ll re-examine the memory later in privacy, but for now, he just lets all the joy and love and yes, all the glitter, wash over him until he loses himself in it.

He dances with Clint on top of the float, and he shoots Steve with a water gun when him and Stark’s makeout goes on for too long. He fires glow in the dark condoms into the crowd and he kisses Clint right on the mouth to a swell of applause and he comforts a young girl who’s wearing the same flag he is and burst into tears when she saw him.

It’s probably the best day of his life, and it only gets better when Clint hands him the microphone and the street gets so silent you could hear a pin drop, and Bucky nearly runs away. Except then Clint takes his hand and squeezes and Bucky feels all his worries drop away, and then he smiles and says, “Hi. I’m Bucky Barnes and I’m asexual and I’m dating Hawkeye and -” the rest of the words he as going to say (not that he remembers them) are drowned out when the crowd cheers so loud it makes his ears ring.

He grins so wide his cheeks hurt and Clint leans in and says into his ear, “Love you, Borky.”

Bucky kisses him on the cheek and grins at him. “Love you too, Clint.”

**Author's Note:**

> To all those who are closeted or questioning or still figuring yourself out, don't worry. Take your time, and remember - I love you, no matter what.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Kryptonian Pride](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19243897) by [drunkraiinbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkraiinbow/pseuds/drunkraiinbow)
  * [[Podfic of] Flags](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20784251) by [Flowerparrish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerparrish/pseuds/Flowerparrish)




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